Playboy’s list of best new bars includes an offbeat choice from Dallas

Playboy’s list of best new bars includes an offbeat choice from Dallas

One Dallas restaurant has earned a spot on national magazine's list. Oddly, it's for best bars.

Playboy has included Greenville Avenue eatery Rapscallion as one of its 50 finalists for the best new bars in America for 2016. According to the magazine, the finalists were selected by a combination of readers, bartenders, writers, and industry insiders.

Other bars in Texas chosen include Canard and Eight Row Flint in Houston, and Small Victory and The Townsend in Austin, all of which are actual bars.

The Rapscallion blurb begins, "In 2016 it is no longer appropriate to distinguish restaurant bars from bar bars," as a writer named Alyson Sheppard hastens to explain why a restaurant would be on this list of bars, when Dallas has seen many great bars open in 2016.

There's no question that Rapscallion is a great place. It was on Southern Living's list of best new restaurants (not bars) in the South, and was a best new restaurant finalist in CultureMap's 2016 Tastemaker awards. Its bartender, Ravinder Singh, made our list of best bartenders.

Playboy's other justifications for including Rapscallion include a "legit" cocktail menu and an "ambitious" wine list.

The magazine seems surprised that Dallas isn't a big tiki haunt, calling Rapscallion's Tuesday tiki nights "an anomaly in Dallas." Yes, where have all the tiki nights gone. Maybe to the same place as the one at Rapscallion, as the writeup concludes, "Diners in the restaurant could probably finish their whole meals without even noticing the under-the-radar [tiki] event was taking place."

Readers can vote for their favorite through August 31. Playboy will announce the top 10 list in the November issue.